


take these walls, these wars (dull my blades)

by trykynyx



Series: our worlds have never gone outside each other [3]
Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Depression, F/F, Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 17:19:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6529054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trykynyx/pseuds/trykynyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s nice when it’s like this,” Sun says, and Riley has never heard her speak before. She thinks how lovely Sun’s voice is, deeper than she’d expected, but just as elegant as she’d imagined. She knows Sun must be talking about the school, quiet and still at this hour, but maybe she imagines, for a second, that Sun means this quiet moment between the two of them. (The hash must be fucking strong, for her to think such a ridiculous thing.)</p><p>“A little early for me,” she croaks back, grinning sidewise and shy. Sun meets her eyes and smiles, just a little.</p><p>(Riley/Sun, high school!au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	take these walls, these wars (dull my blades)

**Author's Note:**

> trigger/content warnings for: past/mentioned death, car accident, miscarriage, suicide attempt, depression, drugs, smoking, vomit
> 
> [this started as Riley+Sun but then I stopped kidding myself]

Riley had really meant to go and see that damn counselor. When her father had squeezed her hand over the stick shift, engine idling, smiling at her with that look in his eyes that had managed to keep her going this past year—she had really meant to go. She had walked through the front doors, feeling him watching her, and she was going to _try_.

 

But then she was inside, and god it was quiet, and the ceilings were so low—had they always been that low—and the light was dingy and flickering and she felt like she was going to be sick. She doesn’t sprint past the hallway of language classes, and then the two large art studios, but it’s a near thing. She bursts through the heavy back doors that lead to the sad little parking lot where the faculty highest on the totem pole parks their cars, then all but jogs around the near corner of the football field. It’s cold enough that the shock of the early morning air feels a bit like breathing in ice water—it helps. By the time she’s made her way up the dirt path to the soccer field, and around the far side of the field house beside it, she feels a little more in control.

 

She slides her bag off of her shoulder, easily winding a hand in to pull out the Ziploc baggie she keeps in an inside pocket. It’s hard to find hash here, all anyone smokes is low-grade weed that puts her to sleep without any real high to speak of—hash makes her feel like she’s walking on the other side of a gully from her body, not like tedious math homework with a side of shame.

 

It’s 7:56 on a Monday morning, and she’s getting high at school. Her mother would be so proud—her insides twist, and god it hurts, it hurts—But she’s not going to get caught, she’s not going to get in Trouble again. That’s why she’s here, tucked behind an ugly brick building that smells like generations of teen athletes’ sweat, out of sight. She’ll get blazed, pull herself together, and reschedule that appointment.

 

It had just been too much, too early in the morning. How was she supposed to walk into that little office, filled to the brim with truly awful motivational posters, and tell the well-intentioned man-child right out of grad school everything? How was she even supposed to start?

 

She’d never even told her father, never told him that she hadn’t just lost Thor that morning, but the tiny beautiful thing their love had made. He couldn’t understand why she’d locked herself in her bathroom that weekend, still frostbitten and numb with horror and loss, and taken a razor to her forearms—vertical and deep, a one-way ticket. She remembers his voice cracking as he threw himself against the locked bathroom door—she’d pulled a drawer open to better block it—and one of the last things she thought before everything went dark and quiet was that she’d never heard his voice take that tone before.

 

Riley blinks back tears, fingering the layers of bracelets that cover the thick, gnarled scars on her wrists. She takes a long pull, inhaling deep and ragged. But she’d woken up, sore and tired and ashamed in that sterile, white hospital room. She’d woken up and her father had been cradling one of her hands in his, whispering a lullaby her mother used to sing to her, his face tear-streaked. She’d woken up and sworn that she would never do it again, sworn she would be better, be stronger, that she would live.

 

And so her father had left the orchestra he’d played for all of Riley’s life, and packed up everything in their house, and the day Riley got the all clear to leave the corner of the 8th floor reserved for the psychiatric wing, he’d pulled up with a U-Haul and keys to a new life. He’d taken her hand and squeezed when they pulled on to the highway, and “Teenage Wasteland” had been playing, and everything seemed like it really could be okay, fine at that very least.

 

So that’s what Riley had decided to do—be fine. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy—known that nothing could really ever be good again, that anything good was packed away in the box labeled “Before”— but she hadn’t anticipated the flood, the avalanche, the crushing weight of the greyness of “After.” Right before she’d tried to swan dive off this mortal coil, the pain had been excruciating—sharp and bright as the stars that had exploded when the car crashed, sending her head cracking into the dashboard, as bright as the blood dripping from between her legs onto the snow. She wasn’t prepared for the way that sound was muffled, colors muted—she wasn’t prepared for feeling dead even as she strove to keep living.

 

It had been easy to fall into the Wrong Crowd; they could smell the greyness on her. She made a reputation for herself—the girl whose music made parties, who only ever smiled when she was so fucked up she could barely walk—made friends she barely knew, let a senior wrap his arm around her neck and call her his girlfriend. If she kept herself moving fast enough, stayed high enough, she could almost pretend it didn’t feel like living in a world where the saturation had been turned all the way down. (That was a lie, but then again, Riley was quite the liar.)

 

The hash must have hit her harder than usual, because she didn’t hear Sun Bak round the corner of the field house. It should have been more startling than it was, but Sun barely misses a beat, and Riley feels like the tightness in her throat eases at the sight of her.

 

It’s strange, she’s only ever seen Sun twice; both times the other girl was wearing sleep shorts and a severe expression, all but carrying her piss-drunk brother into the backseat. Riley always wrapped up the parties—carefully packed away her gear before she let her boyfriend treat her far less gently—and so she saw how Sun only barely clenched her jaw as Joong-ki cursed her, called her a wet blanket, a frigid bitch, even as he vomited his way across the front lawn of Blake Morgan’s house. She marveled both times at how Sun’s shoulders never curved, how straight and strong her back looked, how regal this girl was.

 

(Sun Bak was the kind of girl who reminded every other high schooler in her presence that some kids should’ve been allowed to head straight to college after surviving middle school hell. It made the rest of them look bad, really; Sun had already taken enough AP exams to skip her freshman year of college, and she still had senior year to go. She was poised and polished and pressed and so far out of everyone else’s league she seemed to float above the rest of them, alone and aloof.)

 

She was still unbelievably collected, even with a long, light cigarette dangling expertly from her fingertips, but there was something sleepy and soft about her eyes that Riley had never seen before. Sun only goes a few steps beyond Riley before turning and leaning against the field house too, well within the ten feet let’s-talk smokers’ radius. She lights her cigarette with a sleek, clearly customized Zippo (‘Jesus,’ Riley thinks through the hash, ‘Even her lighter is classy as fuck.’) and inhales deeply, openly relieved and relishing, and somehow vulnerable for it.

 

“It’s nice when it’s like this,” Sun says, and Riley has never heard her speak before. She thinks how lovely Sun’s voice is, deeper than she’d expected, but just as elegant as she’d imagined. She knows Sun must be talking about the school, quiet and still at this hour, but maybe she imagines, for a second, that Sun means this quiet moment between the two of them. (The hash must be fucking strong, for her to think such a ridiculous thing.)

 

“A little early for me,” she croaks back, grinning sidewise and shy. Sun meets her eyes and smiles, just a little.

 

“Yes,” she says simply, takes another long drag. Something about her is very bright, Riley thinks, even on this gray morning, even though Riley hasn’t been quite able to register colors for months. Still, something about Sun seems to her to be a bright pale color, gold maybe, perhaps blue. Riley’s head is swimming and that’s the hash for sure, but the flutter in her heart and the warmth in her bones—well, that’s something else entirely.

 

They are quiet for a while, and it is simple and easy, and Riley doesn’t feel like she’s going to crawl out of her skin around Sun. (She does put her vape away though, because apparently she’s a light-weight now, and math at nine in the morning is hard enough without being stoned out of her mind.)

 

“You are very talented,” Sun says on the tail end of sigh of smoke, and for a moment Riley loses her grasp on human language.

 

“Oh— I didn’t know you’d— _Thank you_ —“ Her heart is beating laughably fast, and she’s pretty sure she’s blushing. “I mean, it’s not like it’s real music or anything.”

 

Sun shakes her head so hard her hair swishes, and it’s the only thing Riley’s ever seen her do that makes her look like a teenage girl.

 

“That’s not true,” she says earnestly, and the part of Riley’s brain that had apparently completely dipped out of this reality decides that Sun is both blue and gold, soft and bright all at once, like a clear bit of sky at dawn.

 

Riley was going to embarrass herself further when a faint bell rings somewhere in the school, far quieter than Riley’s ever heard it.

 

Sun’s eyes flick down the path, straightens, suddenly far less girlish with her almost-finished cigarette dangling between her fingers.

 

“Macro,” she says, and of course she’s in one of the early bird courses that can knock out yet another few college credits. She bends smoothly to rub out her cigarette in the dirt, walks to drop the butt in the dilapidated trashcan at the corner of the field house. She hesitates for a moment, rocking on her heels before turning her body back to half-face Riley.

 

“I guess I’ll see you around?” she asks, though the phrase is technically statement, and Riley smiles more fully than her face really remembers how to (god, she hopes she doesn’t look terrifying).

 

“Definitely,” she answers, agrees, promises. Sun nods (and there’s that little smile again) and starts down the hill. Maybe Riley watches her go, maybe her eyes follow her into the school.

 

* * *

 

Maybe when Riley gets home she scours through the mixes of her old music, trying to find the CDs of parties she remembers glimpsing Sun at. Maybe she tries to narrow down which tracks would have been playing when Sun would have been within earshot while playing designated driver.

 

(Most of the songs on the short list make her cringe and blush alone in her room—but there’s one where she had mixed Big Ben marking midnight into the background that doesn’t make her want to crawl under bed.)

 

* * *

 

When her father asks her how the session went, she doesn’t remember what he’s talking about for a moment. The only reason he doesn’t notice is that rehearsal went long that night, and she can tell by the way he’s holding his hands that they are tender.

 

“Fine,” she answers, moving to start a cup of tea for him that will help the aching. She only feels a little guilty.

 

“I’m going again tomorrow morning,” she says without thinking, and she misses her father’s incredulous expression.

 

* * *

 

She isn’t sure Sun will be there. She walks past the counselors’ offices without bothering to pause, past the hall of language classes, past the art studios, and her chest is tight, like her heart and lungs are being crushed inside a clenched fist.

(Does she hope she ends up alone—she’s good at that, better at it than anything else now—or does she really want something else? Does she really want to see Sun leaning against the field house like a sliver of the early morning sky, with a smile at the corner of her mouth that makes Riley feel like someone young and unbroken and alive again?)

 

She climbs the hill with her eyes down, heart not so much beating as it is stuttering, like a long-dead engine that someone is trying to turn over.

 

When she looks up, and meets Sun’s eyes (but for a second, it’s like she’s seeing herself, expression open like a flower and tender as baby-skin, and it’s like vertigo, but it feels more like the world is righting itself than slipping out of place), the machine that is her heart roars back to life.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry this took so longggg, I lost an earlier version TWICE, plus the start of a Nomi+Capheus carpool piece and then grad school happened.
> 
> Also, I have a Riley/Sun mixtape swap thing on my brain... So, we'll see if that happens.


End file.
